Snowstorm in Siberia claims ten lives

March 11, 2013, 8:11 UTC+3Three of them were the driver and two passengers, who were found dead, as the workers were clearing the road off the snow

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KEMEROVO / NOVOSIBIRSK, March 11 (Itar-Tass) – The death toll over the past weekend at Siberia’s roads covered with snow rose to ten.

The local branch of Russia’s Investigative Committee reports three of them were the driver and two passengers, who were found dead, as the workers were clearing the road off the snow. The road workers saw the car’s roof, and reported the accident to the law enforcement authorities. Investigators came to the site. They found in the car dead bodies of a man born in 1971 and those of two passengers – two women born in 1975 and in 1976.

“According to the preliminary information, on Saturday night the car got stuck in a snowdrift, the driver called the car owner and said about the difficulties adding he would be waiting for a road scraper. The heavy snowstorm covered the car,” the source said. “The investigators say the people could have got poisoned with carbon monoxide or could have frozen.” The investigation is underway.

Another four people got suffocated as they were sheltering in a vehicle from a snowstorm in Kuibyshev, the Novosibirsk region’s branch of Russia’s EMERCOM reported on Sunday.

The tragedy occurred on the night of March 9. “We found a VAZ-2106 car in Bogdan Khmelnitsky Street in Kuibyshev, where four dead young men were,” the source said. “They are not identified yet.” Supposedly, the young men got suffocated of carbon monoxide, as the car’s heating system was failed, the source added.

Three more people died under similar conditions in the Altai Territory.

During the past weekend in Siberia were heavy snowstorms, which caused jams at federal highways, and some roads were closed for the traffic. EMERCOM and the traffic police were working at full capacity, but even their efforts could not prevent the tragedies.